While Sony just announced a bunch of new headphones and speakers, some older Sony products are getting Google Assistant added via a forthcoming firmware update. As these headphones do not have independent Wi-Fi connections, Assistant availability depends on pairing the headphones with a phone.

The newly-announced WF-SP700N and WI-SP600N noise-cancelling sport headphones, as well as the HT-Z9F and HT-X9000F soundbars come with support for Google Assistant out of the box. For the WF-1000X, WI-1000X, and WH-1000XM2, as well as the WH-CH900N and h.ear on 2 WH-H900N wireless noise cancelling series of headphones and earbuds released last year, software updates will be provided to add Assistant support.

As an early adopter accustomed to disappointment from features announced on launch that never materialized, seeing new feature announcements for currently available products is a rather heartening event. That said, the announcement of the feature was actually buried in the press release for Sony's new sport headphones, which you can read more about here.

This post previously mentioned Sony's new soundbars as having support for the Assistant. It has been updated because they only have Chromecast and can be controlled via voice commands with Assistant on your phone or Google Home or other device.

Comments

misc

I bought the WI-1000X over the Pixel Buds and thought they would be brilliant for Assistant--much easier to wear all day versus massive over-ear cans while still having the all-day battery life the current crop of smart buds lack. Very pleased to see it actually happen, and retroactively at that. Gotta love Sony's software support.

Andrew Palmer

As a Sony Android TV owner... I have no love for Sony's software support.

Rohan

As a Sony phone owner, I love their software support

andy_o

I also got those and besides the overly big neck thing, they're more impressive than I was expecting. I'd been using a pair of Bose QC25s in the small office where there's a rack of servers with very loud fans, and the Sony ones seem to do much better at cancelling that sort of noise. And the ambient sound feature also surprised me, I had an old Shure device that could mix outside audio, for use with their noise isolating buds and it had one mic, but the Sony ones use the mics in the buds in stereo so there seems to be a binaural effect, where you can actually tell where sounds are coming from. If the new sports buds have this feature I'm all over them as well.

Ishimaru

What's the point of a 2.1 soundbar with Atmos support? They're going to upmix a stereo signal into 7.1.2? I can't see how that is going to sound good at all.

Actually I think James misunderstood part of that PR. They say it has Chromecast and works with Google Assistant, so you can ask a Google Home to play stuff. So it's basically just another Chromecast soundbar, it doesn't hear voice commands itself.
I'll update the post to reflect that difference.